AFC Telford were unable to act upon the victory at Southport as they fell to a 3-1 defeat at the hands of Leamington FC with Ravi Shamsi coming off the bench to score two second half goals, as the Bucks suffer consecutive back to back 3-1 home defeats.

The Bucks scored early on and broke the deadlock when Chris Lait`s amazing solo run saw him go all the way into the box from the half way line before his shot was pushed away by Jake Weaver, as the ball fell kindly to Aaron Williams who then tapped in from close range with the Bucks getting off to a flying start and taking a 1-0 lead.

The away side equalised after a bizarre set of events, with Henry Cowans been caught out in possession before fouling a Leamington player on the edge of the area, the referee originally gave a penalty but after consulting  with his assistant, he then reversed the decision with a free kick been given from the edge of the area.

Josh March was over the free kick where he found a gap under Telford bodies to the left hand side as the keeper was unable to get down to it from right as his low strike went into the goal.

Then after half time Ravi Shamsi came on and made the telling difference between the two sides, with his first coming when he weaved his way through the Bucks defence while twisting and turning before an eventual shooting opportunity came his way which he made count as he managed to get enough power on his effort to see the ball bounce off both posts before going in.

The second then came in added time with Telford pressing for the equaliser before getting caught out, as Shamsi was level with the last defender before an outburst of pace came from the sub, to where he came towards goal before firing his low effort in the bottom right hand corner emphatically.

Andre Brown had a chance in the first half where his effort ended up in the side netting to the left hand post as he managed to drift away from the opponents to fire a shot from the left hand side just wide.

Marcus Dinanaga was in a goal scoring position when he picked up the ball and drove towards goal, however a defender managed to take the sting out of the shot with his effort going wide to the right hand side.

Manager Gavin Cowans was left frustrated following the defeat with Gavin expressing his disappointment of the performance and that this is something that will need to be addressed, he  wanted the team to have really pushed on and make their one goal advantage count.

“I`m really really disappointed, it`s a performance that was not good enough and something we need to build on.

“I think in any game you want to get off to a quick start, you want to start well and the sooner a goal comes the better, but unfortunately we couldn`t capitalise on that and it`s a different game if we go in at 1-0 but that`s all in hindsight. ”

He then went onto say that they needed to adjust the midfield slightly to be able to adapt to the game, so that they could try to benefit from it and cause problems for Leamington as it never really worked for the Bucks.

“There was no real change in shape today from Saturday, the midfield slightly but during the game I felt like we needed to create some overloads and change that but the lads were unable to try to expose the opposition.”

When talking about why he felt the game went wrong with the Bucks misplacing too many passes during the game he wasn`t sure what the problem was, however stated how they must be as efficient as possible during the next game.

“Just lack of concentration, you know players, I’m not sure if it`s lack of preparation or courage or confidence. It`s difficult and hard to put a finger on it.

” It`s going to be a tough place to go (Bradford Park Avenue) and any place in this league is a tough place to go, we have to go there and utilise our reliable players. ”

by Jamie Morris

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